xviii, 259 pages : 24 cm

Family Values offers groundbreaking analyses of age-old conceptions of maternity and paternity, woman and man, nature and culture, and subjectivity and ethics. Kelly Oliver shows how the contradictions within Western conceptions of maternity and paternity problematize our conceptions of ourselves and our relationships with others. Family Values overturns our traditional association of maternity with nature and paternity with culture. In reconceiving maternity and paternity, Oliver undercuts the recent return of the rhetoric of a "battle between the sexes" and offers hope for a truce. By engaging the work of such thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Kristeva, Kofman, and Irigaray, Oliver suggests an innovative approach to ethics and questions of value. This volume will be of interest to readers in the fields of women's studies, feminist theory, philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies-- BOOK JACKET

Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-251) and index

Preface: Family values -- Introduction: The paradox of love -- pt. 1. Social body. 1. Animal body mother. 2. Maternal law -- pt. 2. Body politic. 3. No body father. 4. Paternal eros -- Postscript: Family values and social subjectivity

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